Day Twenty-Four

We’ve made it to the final Friday of National/Global Poetry Writing Month 2026, everyone!

Today’s featured participant is Poem Dive, where you’ll find a rather heavy response to Day 23’s villanelle prompt, but one that showcases a particular quality of the form — in deft hands, the repeated lines can have a sort of dolorous, bell-like quality, as the poem were tolling its refrains.

Our resource today is this curated selection of letters written by the English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, in which he explains aspects of his thinking about poetry.

Finally, here is our (optional) prompt for the day! In her poem, “The Flying Nightdress,” Mandakranta Sen describes something fantastical and strange that occurs while the rest of the world is asleep. The imagery of the poem is dreamlike, but the situation it describes is otherwise presented quite straightforwardly. Today, we challenge you to write your own poem that takes place at night, and describes something magical or strange that happens but that no one is awake (or around) to notice.

Happy writing!